Newport Town, Newport City,
and Derby
This Newport writeup has been several years in the making. We started this ride two years ago in what was supposed to be an epic eight-town, 51 mile, 5000 feet of elevation ride. Everything started out great. But then, right outside of Holland, my cable broke and we had to abandon the ride. Chris had to book it back to the car to rescue me. We did get about 13 miles into it, and claimed three towns, but we were definitely disappointed to not do our originally planned route.
To see that ORIGINAL route and description, scroll to the very bottom of this webpage.
This is a medium distance ride 20 mile ride with about 2000 feet of elevation.
This route has a lot of pavement because it includes Chris biking back on RT 105 to go get the rescue vehicle. Still, it was a gloriously beautiful day, and the roads were empty-ish, and the temperature was perfect, so a good ride all in all. If just a shorter one.
We started out in East Newport, parking at the Post Office because it was a Sunday, and got on the road early.
The route begins with gentle climbing, heading east on Vance Hill through open and expansive farm country.
At the top of the hill, there is a beautiful view of Lake Memphremagog.
You continue down into Newport City on paved roads, increasingly in the traffic of a downtown, but it was early so we avoided much of that..
After riding through Main Street and crossing the lake, you head uphill, out of town to the east. You pass under the interstate and then past Hopkinson Hill on the left. Turn left, instead, on Hinman Settler Road, a well spaced out residential area, until you hit VT Route 105.
Follow this west through downtown Derby Center to US Route 5 on the left.
Follow this back to downtown Newport City, ride Main Street (in the opposite direction), and then turn onto Highland Ave/VT Route 105 west at Maplefields. VT Route 105 takes you all the way back to the post office.
The Original Plan
51 – 5000-8 Town Loop!
This is the original story about the 51 mile, 5000 ft of elevation – 8 Town Loop! We were super excited about biking this epic loop! Chris had done a lot of work on the planning, and it looked great. It was long and difficult with lots of and distance and elevation. Plus it snagged us eight towns. We devoted the whole weekend to it. We rented an Airbnb and got started super early in the morning.
But then disaster struck less than a quarter of the way into the loop when my shifting cable broke. I was stuck in perpetual high gear and had to walk up the hills. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the ride.
I had to coast, walk and ride (in high gear) back to Derby Center, while Chris rode fast and furious back to the car, so he could drive back and pick me up. So while the route is an awesome loop that would have taken us the better part of a day to complete, we never got a chance to complete it yet ourselves. We hope to ride it in the future.